NAME

lseek -- reposition read/write file offset

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include<unistd.h>off_tlseek(intfildes, off_toffset, intwhence);

DESCRIPTION

The lseek() system call repositions the offset of the file descriptor
fildes to the argument offset according to the directive whence. The
argument fildes must be an open file descriptor. The lseek() system call
repositions the file position pointer associated with the file descriptor
fildes as follows:
If whence is SEEK_SET, the offset is set to offset bytes.
If whence is SEEK_CUR, the offset is set to its current location
plus offset bytes.
If whence is SEEK_END, the offset is set to the size of the file
plus offset bytes.
If whence is SEEK_HOLE, the offset of the start of the next hole
greater than or equal to the supplied offset is returned. The
definition of a hole is provided below.
If whence is SEEK_DATA, the offset is set to the start of the next
non-hole file region greater than or equal to the supplied offset.
The lseek() system call allows the file offset to be set beyond the end
of the existing end-of-file of the file. If data is later written at
this point, subsequent reads of the data in the gap return bytes of zeros
(until data is actually written into the gap).
Some devices are incapable of seeking. The value of the pointer
associated with such a device is undefined.
A "hole" is defined as a contiguous range of bytes in a file, all having
the value of zero, but not all zeros in a file are guaranteed to be
represented as holes returned with SEEK_HOLE. File systems are allowed
to expose ranges of zeros with SEEK_HOLE, but not required to.
Applications can use SEEK_HOLE to optimise their behavior for ranges of
zeros, but must not depend on it to find all such ranges in a file. The
existence of a hole at the end of every data region allows for easy
programming and implies that a virtual hole exists at the end of the
file. Applications should use fpathconf(_PC_MIN_HOLE_SIZE) or
pathconf(_PC_MIN_HOLE_SIZE) to determine if a file system supports
SEEK_HOLE. See pathconf(2).
For file systems that do not supply information about holes, the file
will be represented as one entire data region.

RETURNVALUES

Upon successful completion, lseek() returns the resulting offset location
as measured in bytes from the beginning of the file. Otherwise, a value
of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

The lseek() system call will fail and the file position pointer will
remain unchanged if:
[EBADF] The fildes argument is not an open file descriptor.
[EINVAL] The whence argument is not a proper value or the
resulting file offset would be negative for a non-
character special file.
[ENXIO] For SEEK_DATA, there are no more data regions past the
supplied offset. For SEEK_HOLE, there are no more
holes past the supplied offset.
[EOVERFLOW] The resulting file offset would be a value which
cannot be represented correctly in an object of type
off_t.
[ESPIPE] The fildes argument is associated with a pipe, socket,
or FIFO.